The Man that Nobody Knew

The text that I would like to ponder with you is John 8:19.  This text has become a very scary text to me, because I preach.  What is the purpose of preaching and teaching in God’s church?  We are supposed to learn to know God; that is the purpose.  This is a public conversation that Jesus had with the leaders of the Jewish Church—you could call them the general conference.  Jesus was the One who had instructed Moses to go to Egypt and bring His people out.  He was the One who spoke the Ten Commandments; from the top of Mount Sinai; He was the One who appeared to Moses and spoke to him; He was the One who dwelt in that pillar of cloud and fire that led the children of Israel through the wilderness; He was the One who had inspired the prophets in the Old Testament; He was the One who had appeared to Gideon and Manoah, and the Jews had looked forward to the coming of the Messiah for over a thousand years, and when they came in human flesh, He said to them, “Then they said to Him, ‘Where is Your Father?’  Jesus answered, ‘You know neither Me nor My Father.  If you had known Me, you would have known My Father also.’”

These were the religious leaders of that time.  Do you suppose that those were the last religious leaders of whom Jesus said, You do not even know Me?  We are supposed to be teaching and preaching about Him.  We are supposed to helping people learn to know Him and follow Him.  That is what the Jews said they were doing too.  They said, God is our Father and we are His people; but Jesus said You do not know Me or Him.  What is scary about this is, if I am to teach you to know Jesus, can I teach you to know somebody that I do not know?  No, I cannot.  These people were sure that they knew God, but Jesus said no.  This is a theme that keeps recurring over and over again in the gospel of John.

Jesus said, “O righteous Father!  The world has not known You, but I have known You; and these have known that You sent Me.  And I have declared to them Your name, and will declare it, that the love with which You loved Me may be in them, and I in them.”  John 17:25, 26.  You cannot teach somebody about a love that you do not have.  You cannot teach somebody else to know Jesus if you do not know Him.   What was the crowd that was around Jesus when He said these words?  Was it the thousands who had already acknowledged Him as the Messiah?  No, it was eleven men, and this is important.  How important is it whether we know God or not?  In a prayer to His Father, Jesus says, “As You have given Him authority over all flesh, that He should give eternal life to as many as You have given Him.  And this is eternal life, that they may know You, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom You have sent.”  John 17:2, 3.   Notice the little word and.  Sometimes little words in the Bible are important.  This is eternal life if, two things, if they know You and if they know Jesus Christ whom You have sent.  Jesus said, if you know one you will know the other.  He made that very clear on a number of occasions.  (See John 8:19.)  Jesus said, “All things have been delivered to Me by My Father.  And no one knows the Son except the Father, nor does anyone know the Father except the Son, and he to whom the Son wills to reveal Him.”   Matthew 11:27.   This idea that the Jews had, and that the Islamic people have, and some others—that you can know the Father and not worry about the Son, is not so.  Jesus said you cannot know just one of us—you either know both of us or you do not know either one of us.  How important is this?  This is life eternal!  If you know the Father and the Son, that is eternal life! 

Do you really want to know God?  Today we are living in a world that is very, very dark.  We talk about our explosion of knowledge, but the world that we live in is dark because of the misapprehension of God.  People do not know God in the world in which we live.  They go to church, they sing about God and they pray to God and they read the Bible, but they do not know God.  Do you know Him?  That is the purpose of the Christian religion.  Incidentally, the Jews read their Bible.  Most of them could quote more Scripture than most of us could quote, but they did not know the Author of the Bible.  The same thing has happened among Christians.  There are many, many people who go to church every week.  They hear the Word of God read; they can quote the apostles creed and the Lord’s Prayer; many of them can quote the Ten Commandments, and all of those things are fine and good.  We are not criticizing any of those things.  But do you know God?  Do you know His Son?  Because, no matter what else you know about theology, history, Greek, Hebrew, the writings of the church fathers, the teachings of the theologians, no matter what else you know, if you do not know this, you will not have eternal life.  And if you know this, whether you can read or write, know anything about theology or history, or Greek or Hebrew, or all of those things, you will have eternal life.

By the way, there will be many people in the kingdom of heaven who, in this world, did not know how to read or write.  You do not want me to turn that around, do you?  I am going to, so get ready—there are going to be a lot of people in hell that not only knew how to read and write, but knew all kinds of things about theology, history, Greek, Hebrew, the writings of the fathers and the Christian traditions of the church, but they did not know God.  These people that Jesus was talking to in John 8:19 knew theology.  They could read Greek and Hebrew, and Aramaic.  They could read the Old Testament in the original handwriting of the prophets, but they did not know God.

As I have studied this subject I have been talking with the Lord about this.  I want to know Him.  I do not pretend that I could teach you to know Him in 20 or 30 minutes.  I hope that you are spending time studying the story of Jesus every day.  If you want to know Him, you must start studying the story of His life when He was here in this world.  It is recorded in four different places.  It is recorded by two of His disciples—Matthew and John.  They wrote it out.  There are also the words of the apostle Peter.  There was a man by the name of John Mark who wrote down the words of the apostle Peter preached and explained the life of Christ, and Peter’s gospel was written out by this young man.  You can think of Mark as Peter’s gospel.  Then there was the man who was called the beloved physician.  He was an associate of the apostle Paul, and he worked and traveled with Paul all over the Roman Empire.  Not only did he listen to the apostle Paul preach the gospel to the Gentiles, but he traveled back to Palestine and he went to the eye-witnesses who had seen Jesus work these miracles, and listened to these things.  He said, Tell me what you saw and what you heard, and he wrote it down.  He was an historian as well as a physician.  You can think of the gospel of Luke as being the Apostle Paul’s gospel.  It was written especially for the Gentile audience, and I have found that Luke is the favorite of many Gentile Christians.  You can choose which one you want to study most, but if you want to know Him, you are going to have to invest some time. 

If you are married, when you were getting acquainted with the person to whom you are married, did you say to them, “Look, I am too busy for you, but I will go with you once a week and we will spend a couple of hours together every week, and that is all the time I have for you.”  Did you say that?  In a human relationship you recognize that you are going to have to invest some time in somebody, especially if you are thinking of entering into a marriage.  If you want to know Him, you are going to have to invest some time, too.  The preachers in this sacred desk can preach their heart out, but you need more time with Him than that.  You need to be studying His life everyday.  I am so glad that I made that decision before I was 20 years of age; that I would study something from the life of Christ every day.  It has been my practice for many years to attempt to give a detailed study of one chapter from either the gospel of Matthew or the gospel of John, every single day.  It used to be that I could do that in less than an hour.  It has recently become much more difficult.  So much so, that sometimes it takes two days to cover a chapter. 

One day not too long ago I decided that I was not as busy as I sometimes am, so I would take the time to study a whole chapter.  I got through the chapter, but it took most of the morning, so I do not always cover a chapter anymore, because even though I have read those chapters and quoted those chapters hundreds of times, I am finding more and more depth of meaning in them all the time.  I want to tell you, Jesus Christ is the One who is altogether lovely.  If you are not spending time with Him everyday, you are missing one of life’s greatest pleasures.  You are missing out!  I invite you to start, if you have not done it before.  Decide that you are going to get to know Him; you are going to spend time studying His life everyday.

There are two or three passages in the gospel on which I would like to concentrate.  As I have looked at these passages it has come home with great force to me, Do you know Him?  I hope you will ask yourself that question as we meditate upon these passages.

“Now it came to pass, when the time had come for Him to be received up, [that is, crucified] that He steadfastly set His face to go to Jerusalem, [Jesus was on His way to Jerusalem for the last time.  He knew that when He got there He was going to be crucified] and sent messengers before His face.  And as they went, they entered a village of the Samaritans, to prepare for Him.  But they did not receive Him, because His face was set for the journey to Jerusalem.  And when His disciples James and John saw this, they said, “’Lord, do You want us to command fire to come down from heaven and consume them, just as Elijah did?’  But He turned and rebuked them, and said, ‘You do not know what manner of spirit you are of.  For the Son of Man did not come to destroy men’s lives but to save them.’  And they went to another village.”   Luke 9:51–56. 

Jesus was on His way to the cross and He knew it, and He was tired and He was looking for a place to stay for the night.  He sent messengers ahead of Him to this village to find a place to stay, but because of their prejudice they would not accept Him.  Have you ever had to deal with that?   How do you deal with human prejudice?  How do you deal with human annoyance?  How do you deal with personal resentment?  Superiority to personal resentment and annoyance is one of the marks of a great person, and Jesus surpassed all of the great men of history in this regard.

Perhaps you have heard the story of Abraham Lincoln during the beginning stages of the Civil War.  Thing were going on in a very discouraging way for the Union forces, and Stanton, the Secretary of War, received a letter from Abraham Lincoln, which had been sent by messenger.   Stanton read this letter of Abraham Lincoln, the president of the United States, and he tore the letter up and told the messenger that the president was a fool.  The messenger was so outraged, so furious he could hardly speak.  Imagine talking about the President of the United States like this, when you are just an underling, the person receiving orders.  The messenger returned to President Lincoln, and he was so angry over the insulting behavior of this member of the president’s cabinet.  He told Abraham Lincoln that Stanton had torn his letter up and said that Lincoln was a fool.  He waited to see what President would say.  President Lincoln said, “Did he call me that?”

“Yes,” the messenger replied.  “And he repeated it!”

Abraham Lincoln laughed and said, “Well, it must be true then, he is usually right.”  

How do you react to personal resentment, and annoyance?  When people who do not understand, are prejudiced and angry with you, when they think you are a fool, how do you react?   The people in this Samaritan village would not even give Jesus a place to stay for the night.  James and John were just like the messenger that Abraham Lincoln had—they got angry.  They knew that Jesus was the Son of God, and they said, this is totally inappropriate.  Do You want us to call fire down from heaven and burn these people up?  Jesus said, “No, you do not know what Spirit you are of.”  They did not yet know Him, do you?

One of the ways that you know whether you know Him or not is if you react the same way that He reacted when there is prejudice against you; when there is personal annoyance; and perhaps even hatred.  Someone starts saying things about you that are cutting, and they begin to spread rumors about you and talking against you, trying to destroy your influence, how do you react then?

I get letters from people who are angry and upset about various things.  I will not give you a list of the things that people are angry and upset about, because I have learned that even repeating the list of things makes them angrier and more upset.  People are upset about something that was said in a sermon or printed in a magazine; or something that was said or done by a missionary worker.  We have had people write us and call us because they saw a picture in our magazine about something that happened in Africa and they are very upset that it was done that way.

I Corinthians 13 says that love does not become irritated.  The Kings James Version uses the word provoked.  That word means irritated.  Love does not become irritated.  How much can go wrong with your husband, your wife, your children, your parents, or someone where you work, before you get irritated.  That gives you an indication of whether you are getting to know Him or not.  One of the most amazing things about Jesus’ life is that nothing ever made Him irritated.  It is an amazing thing when you see what happened to Abraham Lincoln, that he could just laugh about it and turn around and go back to work.  There are not many men like that, but Jesus surpasses anything like that.  When you look at His trials—You see, Jesus was contending with supernatural forces, and these demons were in control of the minds of men.  They were all around Him, and the demons had these men do the most insulting things they could imagine.  One of the things the gospel mentions is that they came and spit in His face.  Why do you suppose the devil had people spit in His face?  To try to make Him lose patience, try to make Him irritated.  But He was too big for that!  And friends, if we get to know Him, we will be too big for that, too.  No matter what happens we will not succumb to irritation. 

I received a call recently from a very sincere person, who told me in effect, that what we stand for is going to destroy us.  I did not know that standing for the truth would destroy you, but if it will, I would rather be destroyed standing for the truth than standing for something else.

People get upset because they, or somebody else, were not treated with enough deference or respect.  How come they did not listen to what I say?  Someone was not treated right.  They sing about it in the Country Western music, it is what they call “Somebody done somebody wrong song.”   When you read the story of Jesus from beginning to end, you will find out that He was always calm and self-possessed.  He was bigger than all that.  Are you bigger than that?  You will be if you get to know Him.

Let us look at one other aspect of Jesus’ life and ask ourselves the same question—Do I know Him?  This is something that is exciting and fascinating to study.  Jesus was a person who had personal magnetism.  People were attracted to Him, powerfully attracted to Him, and the reason was that He had a love in His heart for people.  Jesus loved every human being, even the worst sinners; those who were outcasts from society—the adulterers and the tax collectors.  The scum of society, He showed them that He loved them, too.  He loves you, too.  No matter what you have done; no matter what your past has been; no matter how many mistakes you have made, and no matter how many sins you have committed, He still loves you.  And because He loved human beings so much, He had a personal magnetism beyond compare.  If you and I get to know Him we will have that personal magnetism, too, and the people around us will want the religion that we have.  If people do not want the religion that we have, there is something the matter with our religion—we do not know Him.

A text that illustrates the personal magnetism that Jesus had, which was the result of the love that He had for every human being.  He passed no human being as worthless.  Matthew wrote about this himself, this is his own personal experience with Jesus.   “Then as Jesus passed on from there, He saw a man named Matthew sitting at the tax office.  And He said to him, ‘Follow Me.’ So he arose and followed Him.”  Matthew 9:9.  The more you study this verse, the more you are going to see in it.  Notice, it does not say that Jesus stopped.  It says just the opposite.  Jesus was passing by, He did not stop, He is walking by the tax booth and as He is walking by, He just says, ‘Follow Me,’ and Matthew gets up and follows Him.  You cannot study that text without realizing that Jesus had personal magnetism.  He had drawing power!  Here was a man with a lucrative job.  Jesus did not even stop to talk to him; He just walks by and calls him to follow Him.  Matthew gets up and follows.  If you need a leader in your life that will give you some personal magnetism and make you an attractive human being, Jesus is the One you need. 

Something very similar to this happened again in the healing of the centurion’s servant.   The centurion is coming to Him, Jesus says to the centurion whose servant is paralyzed and tormented, ‘I will come down and heal him.’  The centurion immediately says, ‘No, Lord.  You do not need to come.’  Notice what this centurion recognized.  He recognized that Jesus had authority and he said, ‘I myself am a man under authority and I say to this person, go here, and to that person, go there, and they do it, and I say to my servant, do this, and he does it.’  This centurion realized that Jesus had a whole lot more authority than he had.  He understood the principle.  He said, ‘You do not need to come to my house, all you need to do is speak and if you will speak the word, my servant will be healed.’  (See Matthew 8:5–13.)   This man had never met Jesus before, and if you read the story in some of the other gospels, they say that there was some Jews who came to Jesus and they said, “Lord, help this man, because he has been good to us.  He has given us a lot of money for the church.”  But when the man actually came into Jesus’ presence, he immediately recognized whose presence he was in.   This man understood that authority is dependent on faith, and he also understood that faith is dependent on authority.  Think that through—authority is dependent on faith, and faith is dependent on authority.  So this man knew that he needed to express faith, so he said, ‘just speak the word and my servant will be healed.’ 

Notice what Jesus said about that.  “When Jesus heard it, He marveled and said to those who followed, ‘Surely I say to you, I have not found such great faith, not even in Israel.  And I say to you that many will come from east and west and sit down with Abraham, Isaac and Jacob in the kingdom of heaven.  But the sons of the kingdom will be cast out into outer darkness.  There will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.’  Then Jesus said to the centurion, ‘Go your way, and as you have believed so let it be done for you.’  And his servant was healed that same hour.”  Matthew 8:10–12.   How much authority does Jesus have? 

The Greek word for authority is exegesis, and in the King James Bible it is sometimes translated as power, but the most literal translation of that word is authority.  How much authority does Jesus have?  How much power does He have?  I cannot answer that question.  The way He described it to His disciples was that everything in earth and heaven was His.   He said, I have all authority, I have all power.  We do not know Him and that is why we experience so little of the power of God in our lives, and we do not have faith in His authority and power.  If we knew Him we would know that He has the authority and power to do everything.  When He speaks, it happens.  That was demonstrated over and over again when Jesus was here.  All it took was a word, a look, a touch, because He has authority and power.  He has magnetic power to draw people to Himself.  Just before He was crucified He said, “I, if I be lifted up, will draw all men to me.”  John 12:32.

Do you know Him?  If you know Him you will have faith and confidence in Him, because you will know that He has all authority and all power.  We have some people who have been going through some terrible, terrible trials for which there is no human cure.  Sometimes people wonder, If you are serving an omnipotent God, who has all power, why do you get into this kind of trouble? 

One of the reasons we have to get into the terrible troubles that we get into, is so that we will find out that we do not have the capability to do everything that we think needs to be done, and we will realize that we need help from a higher power.  God allows us to get into trouble where there is no human solution.  There is no physician that can help my problem.  There is no financial counselor that can help my problem.  Then you need the Lord.   Jesus has drawing power and He has all authority to exercise it in your behalf.  He has all authority and all power, but maybe you are not receiving much.  Remember, Jesus told the centurion, “According as you have belief.”  You see, if we do not know Him, we do not have confidence in Him, we do not have faith in Him, and then He cannot do much for us.  That is something that Jesus taught over and over again.  When the blind came to Him, He would ask them if they believed that He could restore their sight.  When they answered “Yes,” He said, “According to your belief, let it be.”   If they believed, they received sight! 

What if they did not believe?  There is an example of that in the Scriptures, too.   There is an experience that Jesus had in Nazareth, His hometown.  (See Matthew 13:53–58.)  “So they were offended at Him.  But Jesus said to them, ‘A prophet is not without honor except in His own country and in His own house.’ Now He did not do many mighty works there because of their unbelief.”  Verse 57. 

Do you realize that there were sick people in that town, people who needed all kinds of help, and who could have had help, but they did not believe, so they did not get helped.  Is that your situation?  Do you realize that there is Someone all powerful who wants to help you?  He is attractive.  He has personal magnetism.  He has drawing power.  But He cannot do much for you if you will not believe.  Jesus taught this over and over again.  He cannot do much for you unless you put your faith and trust in Him.

There is one more item concerning Jesus, and I want you to ask yourself this question again:  Do I know Him?  Am I going to get acquainted with Him?  Jesus was the master of every situation!  Did you know that if you choose to put your trust in Him, you will never become the victim of circumstances?  Because He still is the master of every situation.  There are many Scriptures on this, but we will only look at two or three.

Jesus had been preaching and teaching all day and He was very tired, He was so tired that when He got in the boat He went to sleep.  While He was asleep, the devil tried to drown them all.  By the way, the Bible is very clear that the devil is the prince of the power of the air.  He can stir up tempests, tornadoes, and many other things.  The boat was about to sink, Jesus is asleep, and it is about one or two o’clock in the morning.  What do you do?  My wife and I have had that experience where the phone rings about 2:00 o’clock in the morning.  Are you ready to solve any problem that comes along at 2:00 in the morning?  Jesus was!  They woke Him up, and He was exhausted, but they cried, “We are about to perish.” 

Jesus said, “Why are you fearful?”

“Are You crazy?  Look, we are about to sink!”

“Why are you fearful?  You do not have any faith.”    (See Matthew 8:23–26.)   He was not fearful—He was the master of the situation.  By the way, the reason He was the master of the situation was not because He was the master of earth and sea and sky.  Oh no!  He had laid that power down.  The reason He was the master of the situation is because He was trusting in the Father’s might, so He was not worried.    When you realize that He is the Master of the situation and if you have chosen to commit your life to Him, you will not have to worry either.

“What am I going to do?  I might lose my job, and then I will not be able to buy any food or clothing or be able to pay my rent.  I might get some serious disease like other people that I see getting sick.  Then I will not be able to earn a living, I will not be able to do anything.  What will I do?  Some people spend their whole lives worrying—What will I do if this happens, what will I do if that happens?  Jesus said, ‘Do not be anxious about what might happen.’  (See Matthew 5:25.)  Why should we not be anxious?  Because your heavenly Father knows what you need.  He knows how to take care of you.  That does not mean you will not have to work.  The Bible says that in this world we are all going to have to earn our bread by the sweat of our brow.  We will have to work.  But if you are following the Lord, you do not need to worry whether you will have food, whether you will have clothes to wear, your necessities are going to be taken care of.  If you make God first in your life and His righteousness, the kingdom of heaven, He will add the things to you that you need.  (See John 6:33.)  Because He is still the master of the situation.

So many times people came to Jesus and tried to trick Him, and they thought that they had Him in a corner where He could not get out of it—they would either be able to destroy His influence or get Him arrested by the Romans.  (See Matthew 21; 22; John 8.)   Jesus was the master of the situation every time.  If you are in a terrible situation for which there may be no human solution, do you realize that He can be the master of the situation in your life, too?  He can, if you commit your life to Him.

“Let us have more confidence in our Redeemer. Turn not from the waters of Lebanon to seek refreshment at broken cisterns, which can hold no water. Have faith in God. Trustful dependence on Jesus makes victory not only possible but certain. Though multitudes are pressing on in the wrong way, though the outlook be ever so discouraging, yet we may have full assurance in our Leader; for "I am God," He declares, "and there is none else" (Isa. 45:22). He is infinite in power, and able to save all who come to Him. There is no other in whom we can safely trust.”  In Heavenly Places, 17.

You need to know Him.  If you choose to come to Him and commit your life to Him, no matter how bad a sinner you are; no matter how weak you are; no matter how troubled you are; no matter how complicated the situation you are in, He is the master of the situation, and He will save you.  Do you want this miracle to take place in your life?  Do you want Him to be your leader?  Do you want to know Him?  If you do know Him, that will be eternal life, because He has all power and grace and He loves you.